Create Your Own Job

Why You Should Never Stop Being An Entrepreneur

Creating your own job doesn’t have to center on the internet, and in fact, in a time where everyone wants their own start-up, you may in fact be better off bucking the trend. Think of a skill you have or a trade you learned in a past life — those are all potential business ideas. Better yet, if you have a goal in mind, take a bit of your free time to learn the skills needed to reach that goal. If you’re unemployed, doing so would arguably be a better use of your time than casting resumes out into the black hole that is the online job market.

Expect it to be really, really tough

Granted, this isn’t easy to do, and I’m not even a very good example of someone who’s “pursuing their dreams.” There are essentially two ways to go about it: One, begin work in your spare time, building momentum until your business reaches critical mass and you can quit your day job. Two, simply drop everything and dive in. Neither way is easy. Most of us don’t have a ton of free time, and we don’t want to spend it doing something that resembles work, even if it’s something we’d much prefer over whatever it was we just spent nine hours doing. As for the dive-right-in approach, any man with a family depending on him probably finds the suggestion laughable, if not insulting. Still, if more of us could find a way to sack up, grow a pair and start engineering the kind of lives we wanted to live (and yes, by this I do mean taking out a loan to start growing your business, or hitting up your friends and family for start-up cash), I do believe the world would be a better place.

... but being the boss is so often worth it

I mean, think of the possibilities. Yes, running your own business comes at the cost of untold quantities of your own sweat and energy, but anyone who’s worked in a “glamorous” field like law or banking can tell you that the corporate world isn’t much better. Employers have the luxury of treating high-visibility positions as commodities, because we’re taught as men to pursue them, to play the game and follow the rules to achieve success. It’d be great to make a lot of money, but seriously, you owe it to yourself to be honest and admit that you’re taking home a laughably tiny fraction of the income you’re earning for your bosses. If your definition of success is a job that benefits those higher up the food chain more than it benefits you, maybe it’s not the economy that needs fixing. Maybe it’s your attitude.

Yes, big business keeps food on a lot of tables around the world. But it’s just one way, and not the only way, to make a living. You may never create a business from scratch, but just treating the job you have like one makes you that much more valuable as an employee. Keeping the right entrepreneurial attitude causes you to think of other possibilities, and that’s how any great idea is born.